The Pensacola Beach Blog notes that State Farm Settles Mississippi Katrina Claims, which is good news for Trent Lott and other Mississippians who have been stiffed by State Farm for a year and a half. Hopefully the other insurance companies will also settle, and people along the Gulf Coast can move forward with rebuilding their lives.

Policyholders in each of the affected states are going to be required to go to court to get similar deals, because the laws and regulations are different in each state, but the framework is there for possible settlements.

I’ve had my “legislature warning flag” on the sidebar because the Florida legislature has been meeting in special session to deal with the property insurance crisis in the state. Rates have been skyrocketing despite record profits for the insurance companies.

Frankly, the free market doesn’t have an answer for the situation where private enterprise isn’t interested in providing a service. The state has had to create its own insurer of last resort, but that company isn’t allowed to compete with private companies and is required by law to charge more than the private companies for coverage.

The Republicans have passed a bill, but it seems to be predicated on the state not being struck by hurricanes any time soon, which is not a good bet.

When the Shrubbery talks about private insurance companies being the best solution for health care coverage, he obviously has never had to deal with those companies as a claimant. He seems to assume, like Trent Lott did, that you will get what you paid for. That only works if you are ready, willing, and able to sue them.

If you are attempting to place another link for the search engines and you try to impress me by telling me what an insightful writer I am, you might not want to use a comment on Friday Cat Blogging.

So, to impress the world with how seriously he takes energy conservation and weaning the US off foreign oil, the Shrubbery made a speech that is at the White House site: President Bush Discusses Energy Initiative. The speech was given at the DuPont Theater, Hotel du Pont in Wilmington, Delaware, about 100 miles away.

Nothing says concern for conservation more than taking a helicopter from the White House to Andrews AFB, and then flying two 747s a hundred miles [one plane for him and one for the motorcade vehicles and support staff] and then coming back.

It would have used less oil to have chartered buses and brought the audience to the White House.

The transcript may say “Democratic”, but the Shrubbery said “Democrat”. The hateful spirit of Joe McCarthy still exists in the language of the Republican Party.

The word is spelled and pronounced “NUCLEAR”.

The accent is on the second syllable in both “IRAQ” and “IRAN” and the initial vowel is short.

Dr. Cole would be happy to explain the relationship of the various Muslim groups in the Middle East, because it is glaringly obvious that no one in the White House has a clue.

Update: Look, you stupid twit, buy a dictionary – McCain’s escalation is a tactic, not a strategy. You don’t have a strategy, which is one of the big problems with your war.

Update 2: Oh, the civilian reserve idea, it’s called the Peace Corps, and it has been around since Kennedy. Look in your government phone book and you can call and ask them about what they do.

Yesterday:

Tuesday, January 23, 2007

Publishing on the old Blogger was failing with “Error 550” since approximately 5:30PM PST. It was fixed at approximately 8:00PM PST.< /p>

New Blogger was unaffected. Sorry for the inconvenience.

And it has started again for the old sites at 1:30PM CST.

Update: I was wrong, it was new sites:

Wednesday, January 24, 2007

New Blogger has had troubles this morning, which you may have seen with slow requests and 502 error pages.We are working on this and hope to get it resolved very soon.

Update, 1PM: These issues have been resolved. We are continuing to monitor and diagnose closely. We apologize for this morning’s poor performance.

You may still see 502 errors on occasion, but waiting a few seconds and reloading the page should work. This is mostly limited to a handful of blogs, however.